


Six O'clock High

by JaqofSpades



Series: A Cure for Sore Muscles [2]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:24:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4814885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stares at the name for a minute, then forces down the grin that threatens to overtake her professional mask. For a moment there, she was convinced that she was finally about to get her hands on Bass Monroe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six O'clock High

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The Orgy Armada's challenge, Revolution: The Second Coming, to fill Prompt 11, A Cure for Sore Muscles, for my second pairing, Bass/Charlie. Click on the series tag to read the companion piece, "Yes, General", filling this same prompt for Miles/Nora.

Charlie farewells her bubbly patient, then hangs over the reception desk to peer into the appointment book. Two more and she should - dammit. Three more. Tallulah has booked the six o'clock slot again, despite the fact she needs to be out of here by 5.15 if she's going to make it back to Mom's in time for Friday dinner. They're just going to have to reschedule this … Monroe.

She stares at the name for a minute, then forces down the grin that threatens to overtake her professional mask. For a moment there, she was convinced that she was finally about to get her hands on Bass Monroe. When sanity prevails – there's more than one Monroe in Atlanta, and the one she knows probably isn't even in the country right now – she's a little shocked at the pang of disappointment.

Her uncle's best friend is as off limits as off limits gets. More than twenty years older than her, committed bachelor and compulsive womaniser. More than a few men too, she suspects.

Off limits, arrogant and infuriating, she reminds herself, but her libido is already purring at the kicker. Undoubtedly, indisputably, the most beautiful man she has ever seen.

Not that she will be. Seeing him, that is. He's not due back 'til the end of the month, Miles had said, and she's going to deal with that dilemma when she faces it. The thought of Sebastian Monroe staying with them might be even scarier than the idea of him face-down on her massage table.

Tallulah lifts a brow at the little noise she makes, then taps the appointment book. “This guy is new. Didn't leave any information at all – was obviously driving at the time. Rude if you ask me. So give yourself five minutes extra for all the paperwork.”

She's already running ten minutes behind when she swipes the clipboard off the desk and mumbles the name while reading the data. Pain above and below the knee on flexion, long term injury possibly aggravated by a sporting injury …

“Charlotte.”

She looks up into summer blue eyes, then back down to her clipboard. Sgt Major Sebastian Monroe, USMC. Of course it is.

“Sgt Major Monroe,” she squeaks, and shoots a glance at the nosy receptionist, praying she hasn't heard Bass use her name. There's probably a bylaw against this. Or a practice rule or something. It's certainly not smart to put your hands on someone you've always itched to touch. Even though she's a complete professional and would never take advantage.

She hopes.

* 

“Ah. I'll give you a minute to get undressed. Underwear on, though,” she blurts, and prays the heat in her face isn't as obvious as it feels. She's been a registered osteopath for two years now, a student for four years before that, and has asked thousands of people to strip right down when necessary. She refuses to blush just because it's Bass Monroe hobbling into her office.

She places a towel on the bed and ignores the laughter in his eyes as she lets herself out of room. A year ago, she could have done this. He'd spent years ignoring her attempts to flirt, but last Christmas had changed everything. They'd gotten themselves soaked to the bone while building a snowman together, and while his move to rub some warmth back into her arms had started out brisk and businesslike, it didn't end that way. Slower and more sensual by the moment, she could feel the tension in his hands, and had looked up to find him staring down at her lips. He had wanted to kiss her, she was sure of it.

But he hadn't even looked like the incurable tease who had howled with laughter as he stuffed snow down her back half an hour before. Hadn't smiled or tried to charm her – simply stared down at her, eyes dark with predatory intent and mouth tight as he tried to decide what to do.   Charlie had swallowed, and started to remember all the warnings she'd been given over the years. The girls in every port. The long string of seductions. The endless, easy expertise.

She had mumbled something, and backed out of his arms to flee to another part of the house, then avoided him all weekend. They hadn't been alone together since.

And now she had to go back in there and pretend she hadn't spent the last six months wondering what might have happened if she had been braver.

“Fuck,” she cursed softly as she slumped back against the closed door. “Fuckity fucking fuck.”

She allows him a long minute to get onto the table, then takes a deep breath before pushing the door open. She can do this. She doesn't even have to look at him – it wouldn't be the first time she's lost herself in the symphonic perfection of bone and muscle, joints and tendons.

(And if she has to work on the glutes she'd been admiring long before she knew their scientific names and every last attachment point? She is going to _die_.)

“So what happened?” she enquires as she coats her hands in lotion and rubs them together to warm them. She can see the swelling above his knee that's signposting something not quite right with the quadricep; below the knee, there's a suspicious knot that suggests the gastrocnemius is less than happy also. And she knows Bass. Fucking kickboxing.

“I fell down the stairs.”

“No you didn't.”

“Crashed my bike?”

“Liar.”

“Fine. Some kid wanted to prove a point. Reckoned he could put the brass down.”

“Did he?”

He twists around to glare up at her. “No, he did not.”

Charlie rolls her eyes and takes advantage of his annoyance to begin palpating the muscle just above his ankle.   “So. Sargeant Major Monroe stupidly ignored his bad knee so that he could teach some recruit a lesson? And now he can't walk?”

“Something like that,” he snorts, and lets himself drop back down onto the headrest, discussion clearly over.

She works up his leg slowly, looking for telltale heat and pressure under the skin, and noting anything that makes him flinch or squirm. He curses under his breath every time she finds a pressure point, and she wants to accuse him of being a big baby, but instead murmurs soothingly. Professional, she tells herself through gritted teeth.

“There's a lot of displaced tension right down to the ankle on this leg. Probably because you insisted on walking on it after you injured it. Today, did you say?”

“Yesterday. Morning,” he admits with a groan. “Didn't think it was so bad. Plus I didn't want to go to one of those quacks in Arlington. Knew you'd be the best person to sort it out.”

She blinks a little, and flushes. “Not like I've done any work for you – and I know for a fact you've been seeing Kelso for years. What makes you think I'm better than him?”

He shrugs. “He's away. Second honeymoon or something. And he recommended you.”

Charlie smothers her proud grin and forces her focus into the puzzle unravelling beneath her fingertips. She works around the hard knot in the back of his calf, then moves up to stroke along the attachments either side of his knee. He’s never said so, but the way he shifts his weight sometimes when he’s been standing still too long tells her they’re bearing the brunt of his insistence on continuing to fight. The man is accustomed to thinking of himself as a weapon, and refuses to countenance any sort of frailty.

His knees beg to differ.

She tries not to sigh as her hands catalogue the damage he has done to himself over his years in the ring. Professionally, she hates the sport, wincing every time Bass or Miles take a big hit or end up grappling on the mat with some Neanderthal half their age. Her mind insists on supplying all the different injuries they might sustain, all the ways it could end, so, so badly … even as her body liquifies at the spectacle.

It’s the real reason she won’t watch Bass fight, she knows. She hates seeing him hurt, true enough, and she’s opposed to bloodsport in general, but that’s not what keeps her away. Watching Bass fight makes her ridiculously horny, and when it comes down to it, she doesn’t trust her self control.

Which begs the question.

“Turn over. I’m going to work on your glutes,” she says calmly, and her hands don’t wander. They stay strictly where they are supposed to, probing at the hot spots in the giant muscle, stroking the muscle fibres as they traverse the curve of his butt to wrap around his hip.

Well done, hands, she thinks, and clenches her legs together in a bid to calm her overexcited sex. If only she could work with her eyes closed, not see him, and her nose plugged, so as not to smell him. Her fingertips tingle as if to remind her how his skin felt, and she groans – they’d need to rob her of all her senses to stop her from feeling like this. Even the way he grunted when she found a sore spot was sexy, dammit.

She’s never been more thankful for the shapeless uniform she wears, the oriental style green top that fits loosely enough to hide her desperately hard nipples; the thick cotton pants that show no sign of the sexy boyshorts she wears underneath. Or just how hopelessly sodden they are.

He hasn’t noticed, she assures herself, and he might not even care if he did. One almost-kiss doesn’t necessarily mean he’s finally realised she’s all grown up. Or that he’s been thinking about her in the months since. Even if he did choose to drive two hours just to have her look at his knee.

Maybe she was just that good at her job, Charlie goads her professional pride. If she has to cling to that to get through this, so be it, she tells herself as she finishes the last set of mobilisations, then checks the alignment of his hips, and knees and feet.

“That’s looking much better already. Get up slowly, have a sip of water if you need it, and meet me outside to set your next appointment when you’re dressed.”

He nods, and she leaves, and tries not to picture him putting his clothes back on as she waits.

*

After she sees him five times in two weeks to treat the acute pain, Monroe moves to maintenance. Every Friday, six o’clock. By the fourth week, there’s no more soreness around the knee, his bad left leg is as limber as his right, and all that’s left is the general stiffness a man of action experiences when stuck behind a desk for six hours a day.

“What? No Marines to bawl at?” she teases him as her hands glide over the span of his back, fingers honing in on the pressure points that make him writhe under her.

“Advantages of rank and all that. Someone’s gotta do the paperwork, so I figure the bum knee was a sign it should be me,” he sighs for effect, the forlorn sound becoming a gasp as she digs her elbow into the persistent knot underneath his scapula.

“Not too much for you?” Charlie enquires, the false pep in her tone only underlining her smirk.

“Nah. You know I get a kick out of you enjoying yourself,” he fires back, twisting up to hit her with his megawatt grin. “You trying to make me scream, Charlie girl?”

She pushes his head back down into the cavity, and tells herself not to give him the satisfaction of going out of her way to make him squirm.   He’s a client. This a treatment. She knows they’ve gotten too comfortable with each other when the sexual innuendo isn’t even confined to innuendo anymore.

She should put a stop to it.

Instead, she leans down to drop her answer in his ear in a splash of warm, mint-scented breath.

“Yup,” she says, making sure to pop the P.

Not trying to make him scream, exactly, but she’s enjoying herself more than she should, and they both know it. Her hands have grown bolder, and her touch less impersonal. Her fingers graze his shoulders in passing, or ghost over his knee … and sometimes, when she massages him, it’s hard to remember not to let her firm touch give way to something light and teasing, designed to arouse.

“Sit up,” she instructs, and prays he won’t notice her voice is suddenly hoarse.

Charlie inspects the line of his spine, reaching around him to adjust it one way, and then the other. Her steadying hand ends up low on his belly and she’s about to whip it to safety when he covers it with his own, locking them together for a long, breathless moment.

“You’re killing me,” he confesses, and she shakes her head, wordlessly begging him not to say another word. She’s not ready to talk about this. Confronting it would mean she has to think about what’s she’s doing, and face the fact she might have already crossed a line. She’s not ready to do that.

He’s her six o’clock high, and she spends the week waiting for Friday night, craving him, like a junkie slavering for her fix.

*

“I’m fighting next week, you should come,” Bass says into the fraught lull that tends to descend after Charlie has had her hands all over him.

Charlie wipes her hands and she tries to think of a valid excuse. None comes, so she’s left with the truth. “Can’t do that, Bass. Too hard to watch,” she admits, then tells him she’ll see him outside.

She’s about to close the door behind her when she remembers the message Miles had asked her to pass on – something about at a cookout next week to meet his new girl. Charlie is trying to remember her name – Nola? Tara? – when her eyes land on Bass.

He’s just pushed himself to upright, but his eyes are still closed. He’s breathing hard, she can tell, and … oh my.

He’s huge. Huge, and very, very hard – as hard as she is wet, an unhelpful little voice whispers.

And that pained hiss Bass makes as he wraps his hand around his cock? It sounds like a name.

Her name.

Professional, Charlie repeats to herself as she sags into the chair in the reception area, eyes closed. She’s a professional, and she can do this.

Even if she has to get off the minute he walks out the door.

*

“Nora’s a real sweetheart – where the hell did Miles find a woman that smart?” Charlie creates a wall of chatter, trying not to think about what she did last week. What she saw.

Or how he’d stolen glances at her all Saturday night, saying wicked things that made Nora and Miles laugh out loud, completely unaware of the shivery subtext beneath. How he’d glared when Miles asked where her boyfriend was, “that big kid, with all the muscles. Think he was one of your recruits, Bass? Neville?”

Jason, she’d offered, and then had to endure his glares for the rest of the night. She wanted to tell him off for acting like a jealous boyfriend, but she didn’t dare let him catch her alone. _Scaredy cat, scaredy cat_ , something had taunted, but she was happy enough to cop to the charge. She simply didn’t trust herself not to end up in Miles’ spare room, or garage, even his broom cupboard, her claim to professionalism disappearing faster than her panties.

He knew it too, the bastard. When Bass offered to help her wash up, she had to say it was a good chance to get to know Nora. When he sat next to her on the couch, she got up to refill her glass of wine, then said she needed to sit on the floor to help stretch her back out. When he offered to drive her home, she pretended she was going clubbing instead, and called a taxi.

When he hugged her goodbye, she was exhausted by the way her body had clamoured for him all night, and couldn’t help but melt against him.

“See you Friday,” he whispered into her ear, then turned a seemingly chaste kiss on her cheek into something wicked by sliding it south to the corner of her mouth, then finishing her with the flick of his tongue along the seam of his lips.

She had burned all the way home, then spent the weekend trying to convince herself it was a joke. He hadn’t wanted to kiss her properly, hadn’t been half hard when his groin had pressed into her, hadn’t been snarky at the mere mention of a boy she used to date. But now that Friday has rolled around again, she can’t pretend he doesn’t want her anymore.

His eyes tell her otherwise. His entire body screams the message she’s trying so hard not to hear, tensing every time she puts her hands on him, biting down on a dozen quiet groans, and shifting around to take the pressure off his groin every time she turns her back.

For her part, she tries distraction, firing questions about Nora’s service record, quizzing Bass about how long she and Miles had been dancing around each other, and musing about just how serious the relationship might be.

“Pretty goddamn serious since it could get them both fired. Must think it’s worth it,” Bass snarls, and that’s the end of her attempts to make conversation, thank you very much.

She can only let her eyes go out of focus as her fingers hone in on the detail, trying not to see the entirety of the nearly naked man on her table. Little things – the little puckered scar just below the hem of his trunks, the crack she can elicit from his C5 every time she guides his arm flat across his chest, the wince he can never quite suppress when she works her way around the edge of his iliac crest – these are the things that help her remember.

He might not be crippled by the pain anymore, he might be back to regular his kickboxing bouts, he might have just lead his new recruits on their 10-mile conditioning march that very day, but he was still her client. Even if their hour together was the highlight of her week, talking about his would-be jarheads, or whether or not the country could be said to have moved to a war footing, or what her fool uncle might have been up to.

They weren’t dating, though. She couldn’t say yes even if he did ask her out, Charlie reminds herself, and it might not even be what he has in mind. He’s been her uncle’s friend her entire life, and all the sly asides and trashy gossip comes tumbling back: manwhore Bass, love ‘em and leave ‘em Bass, girl in every port Bass.

She’d be able to ignore all that if all she wanted was to climb into his lap and ride him senseless. But she wants to have dinner with him and have him take her home after. Wants to spend the entire night exploring his body with her mouth rather than just her hands. Wants to wake up with him, bitch about him to her friends and bring him back to Mom’s for Thanksgiving.

Everything she’s terrified of because she’s never wanted to do them with anyone but him.

Soft thoughts must lead to even softer hands, Bass yanking Charlie out of her thoughts with a moan of pure appreciation for the things her hands are doing to him.

“God. Feels so good, Charlie.”

His voice is rough, but it’s the way his fingers tighten on the edge of the bench that really gets to her. He looks like a man clinging to his control, just like she has been for so long now.

“Your hands are so warm. Higher, babe.”

She’s working on his IT band, something that’s not actually meant to feel good, she informs him. “And I’m not anyone’s _babe_.”

He snorts at that and lifts his head to look at her. “What about that punk Neville? He know you’ve got your hands all over me?”

Charlie sighs. So that’s what’s been bugging him. She’d gone out with Jason because she liked buff, muscly guys, and he was certainly that. She’d only brought him to the family dinner in the first place because her Mom had been nagging her so much; and when he and Miles had done the buddy-buddy Marines thing all night, she’d been impressed enough to let him into her bed that night. He’d been much less confident there, and the way she’d seen him light up with Miles, she had wondered …

“Where I put my hands isn’t any of his business. But even if it was, I think he’d be more jealous of me than you.”

He tilts his head in question, then catches her meaning with a guffaw. “Maybe he’s bi?”

“Maybe. Whatever his gig, I didn’t like him enough to be his learner girl.”

“Dud fuck?”

“Okay fuck, wasn’t a fan of going down.”

“ _Seriously_?”

Charlie had never harboured any doubts about Bass Monroe’s capability as a lover, but his shock at the thought a man might not want to eat her out – it’s so genuine, and obviously appalled, that it yells his own preferences in the matter.

She has a sudden, vivid picture of him lying on his back as she walks around him, the bed low enough to allow him to tip his head back and nose his way into her bare pussy. He’d start with measured swipes of his tongue up and down her dripping slit, as careful and sure as her hands have been over these past weeks, and would maintain that as long as it took to bring her over the edge. Ultimately, his goal would be to make her to scream, she knows. Holler the place down, just to hear her pleasure. But would he take mercy on her and bend her over the bed to fuck her, or would he keep her there, writhing on his face, coming and coming and coming until she begged him to stop?

She can’t take another week of this. Or even another minute, she thinks faintly.

“Charlie?”

She blanks for a moment on what they’d be talking about before her little trip to fantasy land, then remembers with a giggle.

“Oh yeah. Could practically see him reading the map as he tried to find my clit.” She can’t look at him as she says it, but her hands move up onto the delicious fullness of his glutes, and it’s not a therapeutic touch. It’s a caress, her fingertips raking over the hard muscles, momentarily trespassing into the forbidden territory between his thighs before she loses her nerve and changes course.

“Moral of the story: don’t fuck a boy when you need a man,” Bass growls, and she forgets how to breathe.

Her hands don’t seem to need oxygen, though. They’ve forgotten all propriety, forgotten the years they’ve trained and the ethics she subscribes to as a member of the healing professions. Her hands are shameless, and honest, and hungry.

One is exploring the smoothness of his back immediately above the waistband of his trunks, stroking the skin, sensitising it, before inching under the clingy grey fabric to score her nails across the perfection of his ass. The other is bolder again, pushing between his thighs to cup his heavy balls, to tickle them, to make him thrash.

“Turn over.”

He obeys, and she is riveted by the sight of his cock, so hard the pink tip has already escaped its clingy prison, the sharp lines of his helmet making her mouth water.

“Look at me, Charlie.”

She drags her eyes upwards, bracing herself for the moment he will roast her alive. There’s no pretending, when they can look in each other’s eyes. No backing away from this.

“I’m your osteopath,” she tries, knowing she’s clinging to a crumbling cliff.

“You’re my friend, who is unfortunately the best osteopath I know. But I’m willing to go back to second best if I get to have you. If we get to have this.”

She wants to tell him there’s no way she’s letting him go back to Kelso, and he’s her friend too, and what, exactly, does he mean by _this_ , but her hands are busy again. This time, they’re moving over her own body, pushing down the mint green trousers, and lifting the matching tunic over her head. Her bra is a workaday one, and _God_ , her panties are in embarrassing state, but …

“So fucking beautiful. It’s been driving me mad, that body of yours under that atrocity of a uniform,” he curses, swinging his feet off the bench to make his way to her.

“No. Stay there,” she orders, then simply smiles when he arches a brow in question.

“Every time I bent over you, what were you thinking? All those times I practically had to climb on top of you to get those knots out of your shoulders? What about when I ask you to turn over, and you always had to take a few deep breaths before you could? What were you thinking then?” she asks, prowling closer.

He eases himself back down onto the bed, but props himself up his elbows so can watch her. Walking around the bed, finally allowing herself to admire him properly, mapping him with her fingertips as she lets herself think every dirty thought that’s passed through her mind over the past five weeks. She stops at his feet, and runs her fingers over the soles so lightly he shivers with delight.

“Well?”

“Didn’t involve my feet, that’s for sure.”

She steps around the side of the bed and lets her fingertips trail up his shin and towards his knee.

“The knee?”

“May have wanted to bounce you on it, once or twice. Or put you over it.”

She takes another step, and he licks his lips, eyes locked on her cleavage.   “What did I do to deserve that?”

“You were a naughty, naughty girl. All those years looking at me like you wanted to eat me up, when I couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it. And now, when I finally can, you try to drive me out of my mind.”

She runs a finger down the centreline of his chest to soften her words. “You mean – squeeze you into my busy schedule to fix the knee you fucked up and then dared to try and maintain some semblance of professional ethics?”

He looks shamefaced for a second or two, then grins. “That’d be so much harsher if you weren’t almost naked.”

“Well, that’s an oversight,” she quips, and watches his face fall. Then she pushes her panties down and steps out of them before reaching behind to unlatch her bra, easing the straps down over her shoulders to let her breasts swing free.

He makes a sound like a wounded bull, and Charlie feels ten feet tall.

“On your front.”

His groan of protest doesn’t stop him from turning over. Charlie smoothes her hands over his back a few times before placing one knee on the bed to lever herself up, coming to rest sitting neatly astride his butt.

“Want me to show you what I was thinking?”

A fervent tumble of noise seems to be an unequivocal yes, so she wastes no time in stretching full length on top of him, the warmth of his skin sinking into her bones, before dragging herself back up. And down. And up, her hard nipples dragging along the muscles of his back, inscribing a crazy path of pleasure as she shimmies and shivers and shudders her way to the most unexpected orgasm of her life.

“Did you just --”

She lies prone over him, burrowing her lips into his neck, barely able to move. “It’s been a while, okay? And they’re very sensitive,” she says defensively, glad he can’t see her blush.

“Next time I get to watch. And speaking of sensitive parts … a very sensitive part of my anatomy is currently underneath both of us. Any chance you’ll let me turn over?”

“Mmm. It’s a definite possibility.”

“What about giving you another orgasm?”

“Also on the cards,” she murmurs as she slides backwards and kneels up to give him the room he needs to flip over.

Charlie hovers there, gripping him with her thighs, basking in the way he’s staring up at her, something deep and terrifying brewing in his eyes. His hands have tightened into fists, as if he is restraining himself from touching her. She reaches down to stroke them open, and interlock their fingers before dragging both sets of hands back to her body.

“I’m done waiting, Bass.”

He jackknifes up to meet her, dragging her forwards into the fold of his body, his trunks the only obstacle between them as she rocks and shudders over his hardness. In the end, he simply shoves them down his thighs enough to allow his cock spring free; Charlie sinks onto him with a moan five weeks in the making.

In her fantasy, he had fucked her from behind, her breasts mashed against the bed as he plunged into her so hard the entire bed shook. Reality is their souls meshing together as they stare into each other’s eyes, legs wrapped around each other’s hips, the bed giving off a constant low level creak as they rock their way to a place their gasps and moans come in concert. She can see tears in his eyes as he begins to spill into her, and the magnificence of the moment has her sobbing out her own orgasm, completely overcome.

“Jesus. We’re a pair of pussies,” Bass says eventually, kissing her forehead as he untangles their bodies, stretching out his legs with a grimace.

“Uh huh,” she says dreamily. “Puppies holding kittens. Rainbows and lollipops. Mushier than Miles and Nora, even.”

Bass snorts at that prospect and pulls her into the shelter of his arms as he lays back. “Steady on there, champ. That’s the A-league you’re talking about there. Gonna need to take you on a date or two, maybe even fess up to your family before we even make that ballpark. Baby steps first.”

“Like?”

“How about we go home, get cleaned up, and find a bed that’s more than a couple of feet wide? Then I can do some research about just how mushy I can make my favourite Matheson.”

“Mmm. Could go a massage. I have lots of sore muscles,” she purrs. “And there was something about the difference between a boy and a man …”

“We’ll just call you dinner and dessert then,” he decides, lowering his mouth to hers. They kiss lazily, endlessly, until they have to stop to drag in lungfuls of air. Charlie is about to return her mouth to his when her attention is caught by the deep, sonorous clang of the University’s bell tower.

It’s ringing out the hour – dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong, dong – and the cascade of sound strikes her as almost sombre until she realises what it means.

It has gone seven, and she’s off the clock, and something tells her the night, the weekend, maybe even the rest of her life is just about to begin.

 

_fin_


End file.
